MUSIC; Eminem and Lil Wayne, Rhyming With Friends

By KELEFA SANNEH

Published: November 30, 2006

As most of Eminem's fans already know, 2006 has been one of the worst years of his life. And as many hip-hop listeners are learning, 2006 is turning out to be one of the best years of Lil Wayne's career. These two rappers don't have much in common, besides a fondness for unlikely rhymes and a weakness for stupid jokes. But both are responding the same way: by playing host.

The two rappers are each releasing new compilations, though not in the same way. On ''Eminem Presents: The Re-Up'' (Shady/Interscope), which is all but guaranteed to be one of next week's biggest new releases, Eminem surrounds himself with his prot?s, including 50 Cent. It's a big-budget promotional tool, but it's also a chance to hear an often-solitary rapper finding refuge in friendship.

By contrast, the new Lil Wayne compilation, ''Young Money Volume 1: Lilweezyana,'' is decidedly low-budget. You can't find it in shops, though you can find it online. (Visit youngmoneyent.com/ymaudio/index.html to hear it free.) This, too, is a promotional tool for emerging rappers, but Lil Wayne can't help but steal the spotlight from his prot?s; he sounds as if he's having the time of his life.

Eminem remains perhaps the most popular rapper alive: his 2005 greatest-hits compilation, ''Curtain Calls'' (Aftermath/Interscope), sold about 2.5 million copies in the United States, even though his fans already owned most of the songs. But in the last few years he has sounded increasingly exhausted or uninspired. His 2004 album, ''Encore'' (Aftermath/Interscope), was full of vague talk of retirement. Last summer he pulled out of a European tour to check himself into rehab.

Then came the events of this year. His second marriage to his daughter's mother ended in divorce. And on April 11 his best friend, the rapper Proof, was shot and killed in Detroit. According to The Detroit Free Press, Eminem told mourners at the funeral, ''Without Proof, there would be no Eminem.''

Maybe it's a coincidence, but in the months since then Eminem has been in a collaborative mood. He teamed with Akon for the daffy pop smash ''Smack That.'' He posed with 50 Cent for the cover of Vibe. And in ''You Don't Know,'' the first single from ''The Re-Up,'' Eminem begins on a fraternal note: ''When me and Fif' got together to do this music/ The more we became enveloped, we just developed a fellowship through it.''

50 Cent appears on four ''Re-Up'' tracks, along with a mixed bag of aspiring stars who are also signed to Eminem's Shady Records. The other members of D-12, Proof's former group, make mercifully brief appearances, alongside the Detroit rapper Obie Trice and some newer signings: Stat Quo, a hard-spitting Atlantan; Ca$his, who gruffly claims both California and ''the Midwest'' as his home turf; Bobby Creekwater, formerly of the slick (and heavily OutKast-indebted) duo Jatis.

Many of these rappers share Eminem's enthusiasm -- though not quite his aptitude -- for reciting dense, polysyllabic lines. And there are moments when Eminem definitely sounds rejuvenated, including ''The Re-Up,'' an exuberant collaboration with 50 Cent. (As is often the case, most of Eminem's best lines are unfit to print.)

But listeners may also notice that he's recycling old themes (his alleged dalliance with Mariah Carey; his possible retirement) and even, maybe, old lines. In the gloomy ''No Apologies,'' he raps, ''He's able to spill raps long after he's killed/ That's a real MC, got you feelin' me.'' Some fans may remember a similar line from four years ago: ''Till I collapse, I'm spillin' these raps, long as you feel 'em.'' Or maybe he's revisiting on purpose. And in any case, if this rather spotty CD helps him to recover that old swagger and excitement, who could complain?

Lil Wayne doesn't need any help. In the last 14 months, he has provided the hip-hop world with more swagger and excitement than many rappers manage in their careers. His fifth album, ''Tha Carter II,'' was released late last year ; whereas once Lil Wayne had been dismissed as a kiddie-rap novelty act, now he was delivering nimble rhymes and proclaiming himself ''best rapper alive.'' Then, this spring came a mixtape, ''Dedication 2,'' which was partly a tribute to his native New Orleans. And he teamed with his longtime mentor, Baby (also known as Birdman), for a high-spirited CD, ''Like Father, Like Son'' (Cash Money/Universal), that was released on Halloween.

He is impossibly prolific, yet he often sounds -- to his credit -- as if he's just goofing off. Certainly that's the feeling on the ''Young Money'' mixtape, which is named for his label. (He is also president of Cash Money Records, his longtime home.) It might be the wackiest Lil Wayne mixtape so far, which is saying something; in one free-associative rhyme, he delivers this nonsensical boast about his jewelry: ''Check my pattern, scheme/ I probably have on rocks from the moon and Saturn's ring.''

The tracks were compiled by Raj Smoove, a New Orleans D.J.; unlike DJ Drama (who compiled Lil Wayne's two ''Dedication'' mixtapes), he isn't a very effective host. And the emerging rappers on the CD, including Mack Maine and Curren$y, don't make much of an impression. And for that matter, the beats (when they aren't stolen from stars like Jay-Z and Young Buck) are sometimes forgettable.

Yet it hardly matters: this compilation offers yet another chance to hear a rapper in his prime, and few musical spectacles can compete with that. Lil Wayne turns an old hip-hop controversy (Dr. Dre's assault on a journalist) into a daffy boast: ''I'm so fresh I should be smacked, like Dee Barnes/ And you'll get smacked like a baseball by B. Bonds.'' There are plenty of the usual dirty jokes, alongside more-sad-not-angry rhymes about Hurricane Katrina, his former partners in the Hot Boy$ and his father. And in ''Amen,'' he compresses years of frustration into three pithy lines:

Government still quittin' on us

Lost a few homies, and the grief still sittin' on us

So we got they names written on us.

Like many rappers before him, Lil Wayne is promising that his next album will be a ''classic''; unlike most of them, his prediction seems plausible. For now, he seems to be doing whatever he wants, and doing it effortlessly. You can almost believe that Lil Wayne's hot streak will last indefinitely. But then, once upon a time, lots of us felt the same way about Eminem.